Sixteen years ago I found a stranger’s baby in a car trunk — I never imagined she’d been left there for me.

doctor’s exam sixteen years ago and never told me outright. I only knew it because I’d kept every scrap of paper from that year in a shoebox at home, the way you keep things you’re afraid to lose twice.

The lock clicked.

Inside was more cash than I’d ever held at once — banded stacks, the kind you see in movies, not garages — and beneath the money, a thick envelope with one word written on the front in careful handwriting: Marcus.

My name. Someone who had never met me, as far